Custom Code Templates

Use custom templates to quickly add your own code template to source files when you create a metadata object such as an Apex class in VS Code. Templates are files that contain your custom code. You can use custom templates to:

  • Add default copyright information to new files in your project.
  • Add default code to Aura or LWC to enable a new Apex class, and so on.

This git repo subdirectory contains a collection of official Salesforce templates for metadata components. Only updates made to the files listed in this directory show up in source files in VS Code. You can clone this subdirectory, or replicate it locally. You must keep the same folder structure. Update relevant template files with your code, and remove the files that you don’t wish to override.

You can store template files in a local directory, or in a GitHub project. Set customOrgMetadataTemplates to your custom template location:

  1. Run sfdx config:set customOrgMetadataTemplates=<GitHub repo or local template directory> command from the terminal inside VS Code.
  2. Run sfdx config:list to confirm that the configuration setting is updated.

The sfdx-config.json config file in your <project-folder>/.sfdx folder is updated with a new entry in the format, "customOrgMetadataTemplates": "<GitHub repo or local template directory>".

See CLI Runtime Configuration Values for more information about configuration settings.

  • sfdx config:set customOrgMetadataTemplates=https://github.com/vscodeuser/salesforcedx-templates/tree/main/src/templates/ sets the customOrgMetadataTemplates configuration value to a directory on user vscodeuser's GitHub repo.
  • sfdx config:set customOrgMetadataTemplates=/Users/vscodeuser/CustomTemplateProject/MyCustomTemplates sets the customOrgMetadataTemplates configuration value to the MyCustomTemplates directory on a local machine.
  1. Clone this git repo subdirectory.
  2. In your cloned repo, delete all folders except the folders that contain the templates you want to use.
  3. Make updates to the custom templates in your repo.
  4. Check that customOrgMetadataTemplates points to this repo.

The Salesforce Extensions require your templates to follow the exact folder structure and nomenclature as this repo. There’s no such restriction when you use the CLI to specify templates for metadata objects.

  1. Create a folder in your VS Code project directory to hold your custom templates. Name the folder something intuitive, for example "MyCustomTemplates".
  2. Carefully check folder and file names in this git repo, and create subfolders of the same names that contain the files you wish to customize. For example, create a subfolder named lightningapp and add a file named DefaultLightningController.js to customize the default lightning controller JavaScript file. Create a subfolder named apexclass and add a file named DefaultApexClass.cls to add custom code to an Apex class.
  3. Make updates to your custom template files.
  4. Check that customOrgMetadataTemplates points to your custom templates directory.

VS Code downloads the template files locally (~/.sfdx/custom-templates on macOS/Linux or %USERPROFILE%\.sfdx\custom-templates on Windows) the first time the template repository is accessed. To use updated templates, clear the local cached files to download the template files again.

If your template location is on your machine, any changes that you make to the template are ready for use immediately after save. If you're not seeing an immediate change, refresh your VS Code window to clear the VS Code cache to then see the changes reflected.